
Class JlL^d— 

Book___ 

Copyright U? 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSff. 



DOES GOD COMFORT? 



BY 

ONE WHO HAS GREATLY 
NEEDED TO KNOW 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






*-t 



** 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

MAY 18 1906 

~ Copyright Entry 
CLASS 'qJ XXc No. 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1906, 
By THOMAS Y. CKOWELL & COMPANY. 



Published, April, 1906. 



©eUtcatton 

TO ALL WHO DEEPLY NEED TO KNOW 
THAT GOD CAN COMFORT 



He that escheweth Sorrow and hateth to dwell with her, is as 
one who rejecteth an angel and thereby wrongeth his own soul. 



He that thinketh his own cross heavier than another's and far 
too grievous for the bearing, knoweth not that to each God allotteth 
the one cross that most truly testeth his weakness and so urgeth 
him Godward for helping. 



He that feareth the ministrations of Death and deemeth him an 
enemy, wotteth not that behind an austere seeming hideth a most 
gracious angel, the warder bearing the keys of the door to the life 
immortal. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

The Supreme Question 1 

CHAPTER II 
Counter Currents 5 

CHAPTER III 
Poor or Rich 13 

CHAPTER IV 
The Test Infallible 18 

CHAPTER V 
A Call and a Response 23 

CHAPTER VI 
Seeking the Life Eternal 31 

CHAPTER VII 
The Transfiguration of Grief 41 

CHAPTER VIII 
Forbid them Not 51 

CHAPTER IX 
Sunset Hours 73 

v 



DOES GOD COMFORT? 



CHAPTER I 

THE SUPREME QUESTION 

Even in the days when men in general believed in 
a personal God, — there came a time to every soul that 
sounded the heights and depths of human experience, 
when one question seemed more imperative than any 
other, — Can God comfort ? From the depths of 
bereavement, from broken hopes, often from wholly 
blasted lives, the cry went up insistently, — Can God 
comfort ? 

Even in those days, in proportion as agonizing 
distress laid its unescapable grip on a soul, that soul 
had inevitably to readjust its faith, to know what it 
actually believed, to question God, as it were, and to 
learn, if possible, the meaning of life and death, and 
prove for itself the reality of things unseen, the per- 
manence of all true ties, the nature of the treasures that 
cannot fade. 

Even in those days, souls often felt that their bur- 
dens were intolerable. The graves that covered their 
beloved seemed to hold all that had made life worth 
living ; the hopes that had fallen to dust in their hands 
seemed to have taken with them all the sunshine and 
sweetness of earth; while to lives blasted and seared 

1 



2 DOES GOD COMFORT f 

by sin, what remained but the darkness of despair? 
And these conditions of questioning seemed inevitable 
even while men still believed God in his world. 

To-day, natural law, cold, impersonal, eternal — as 
men measure — seems to many to stand where once 
stood God the Father; and the primary question to 
many a man is, Can it be proved that there is a personal 
God? 

We grant that men have a right to ask this question. 
They cannot, in the readjustments of science, escape 
the asking; yet neither can they by any amount of 
merely scientific investigation find a way to answer 
their own query. Science reveals but God's methods, 
not Himself; and yet to every soul to-day comes the 
insistent question, changed in form, indeed, but more 
terrible even than the old instinctive appeal to God. 
Can God comfort? is infinitely simpler than, Is life 
worth living, presupposing that man is but the noblest 
animal and that death ends all? 

If bereavements, if sorrow, if despair, were bitter 
in the days of an inherited faith, what must they be 
to-day to the myriads bending beneath them, in a world 
that to them holds no eternal Fatherhood, knows no 
Christly fellowship, and points forward to no personal 
immortality ? 

If we grant, and we must, that men have the right 
to follow whithersoever all truth leads them, have we 
any ground for believing that, thus following, any soul 
shall truly find God, — the Source of all law, of all life, 
of all strength and comfort, — and each in his own per- 
sonal experience prove that life is worth living, that 
death does not end all, that it is rather but a nobler 



THE SUPREME QUESTION 3 

beginning, a putting off of the dust of earth, a putting 
on of the garments of immortality, in a life that tran- 
scends the highest imaginings of to-day ? In short, may 
men know that there is a God who cares for the souls 
that He has made, who is able to comfort in our bitter- 
est bereavement, to perfect every true hope, and to 
lift again into wholeness and holiness those who have 
sinned most deeply? 

More than this: if there is such a God, one who can 
help, one who cares to help, has not each soul the right 
to expect help in its search for Him, to be assured that, 
honestly seeking, it shall find Him, and that having 
found Him, in Him it shall find all fulness of comfort, 
of strength, and of peace? 

One soul at least believes that God responds to every 
honest prayer more truly than did ever any earthly 
father's heart respond to the cry of his children; that 
in exact proportion to each soul's need is its Heavenly 
Father's loving pity, and that it may become impossible 
for a logical brain to doubt the existence of a God who 
fully understands every need of the individual soul, 
who can satisfy the very highest desires of that soul, 
who can lead it to Himself by paths that soul itself 
will approve as its years pass and its life grows, who 
can lift it into fellowship with Himself, removing from 
it, day by day, all that defiles it and hinders that fellow- 
ship, not by easy methods but by sure ones; and who, 
if need is, may even allow a soul still in the body to 
know that death does not end all, that the dead do not 
forget, and that all the souls in God's keeping — part 
on earth and part in heaven — are not widely sundered 
by death's invisible barriers. 



4 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

If to one questioning soul has been given power to 
believe that all this is true, to attain absolute rest in 
the very heart of life's vicissitudes, and to know that 
God can comfort, — will it seem a needless service if 
that soul tells, as simply and as truly as it can, what 
made it a questioning soul, why it sought God, and how 
it found Him, and what the seeking and the finding won 
for it as its years went by? 



CHAPTER II 



COUNTER CURRENTS 



To have any value at all, this little monograph must 
be personal as well as truthful, and with candor describe 
the progress of one soul toward self-knowledge and 
toward God. It is probable that there are some for- 
tunate, or unfortunate, individuals who find little 
difficulty in self -analysis, and to whom the results of 
that analysis are quite satisfactory. To them, this is 
a very good world, and the position they occupy in it 
well suited to them and most comfortable. 

But there are others who for a long time find it 
impossible to understand themselves mentally and 
spiritually, and to whom their circumstances and 
surroundings give much discomfort, until, so to speak, 
their individuality becomes so regnant that they can 
rise above the limitations and sorrows of their external 
lives, or to put it more strongly, till the soul can forget, 
or at least master, the bonds of the body. 

If, instead of studying one's self too closely, one now 
and then studied one's ancestors, especially the im- 
mediate ones, the problem might sometimes be greatly 
simplified. 

For one, I confess that I had never at all understood 

5 



6 DOES GOB COMFORT 9 

certain perplexing traits of my own, till a little mono- 
graph on "Our Scandinavian Forefathers" fell into 
my hands. Then I understood that I belonged to a 
Race as well as to a Family. 

In the meantime the years had been bringing me 
questions that the fact of race could not answer. Why 
were some of the convolutions of my brain always 
questioning the conclusions of others? Why could I 
not believe as easily as the majority about me seemed 
to do? Why was there an inevitable interrogation 
suggested by every positive statement that I heard? 
And why did I demand in others qualities that justified 
reverence as well as love? Where or when did I get 
the assurance that nothing worthy ever ended or could 
possibly be lost, and that, after all, to serve was better 
than to be loved? 

Of course these questions came clearly only as the 
years brought me full self-consciousness. Once insist- 
ent, however, I sought, as I now think logically, for 
practical answers to them; and I had not to go far 
afield before finding such answers. 

I had often noted the difference between my parents. 
My father was a grave, strong, upright, silent man, 
educated, and — in the highest sense — self-sufficing. 
Tall and muscular in form, with a noble head, deep-set, 
clear eyes of darkest hazel, from which always looked 
forth a questioning soul, a firm mouth, a square chin, 
smiles that were infrequent but that lingered long in 
the memory of those to whom they were given, — 
the man as a whole, in his maturer years, gave an unu- 
sual impression of reserved power and depth of feeling. 
In manner he bore himself with a rare, old-time cour- 



COUNTER CURRENTS 7 

tesy toward all, and whatever may have been his 
freedom of speech in his sea-going days, was never 
known in the later years to utter an impure or profane 
word or to tolerate a speech of double entendre; and 
whether he had faith or lacked it, whether he approved 
or disapproved the methods by which this world was 
controlled, he kept to himself. 

Thoroughly conversant with the affairs of the world 
at large, his affections were centred in his own home 
circle; yet even there he was undemonstrative. He 
spoke little of his past, and it was only as one noted his 
intense interest in his own country and in the political 
fortunes of his adopted land, that one caught glimpses 
of his natural intensity of nature. Quiet as always were 
these manifestations of strong feeling, it goes without 
saying that he was a man without intimacies. He 
did not care for them. Whatever life had to give him, 
it had given; and satisfied or not, he was master of his 
fate, at least to the point of silence, save to his wife. 
She knew him through and through. 

My mother, — what words shall I find to describe 
her? She was sunshine, sweetness, sympathy incar- 
nate. I have never known another possessing her 
magnetic sweetness. The tenderness in her voice, the 
charm of her smile, the irresistible mother love in her 
deep, dark eyes, were patent even to the merest stranger, 
and drew to her at once the saddest as well as the sun- 
niest-hearted, eclipsing even, to a great degree, the 
admiration awakened by her loveliness of face and 
manner, and the freshness and zest with which she met 
and mastered all the duties and cares of her daily life. 
She had beautiful hair, a low, broad forehead, a strong, 



8 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

yet delicate face, a mouth that seemed made for smil- 
ing, and eyes and hands that drew and held every one, 
from the little child in its own mother's arms to the 
most critical, the most cultivated, or the most needy 
man or woman who met her. 

No one could resist her personal charm, a charm so 
spontaneous that those who felt it dwelt lightly on her 
grace or sweetness, and new acquaintances often as- 
serted, " She is the only person I have ever met exactly 
like my own mother. " Those who knew her under- 
stood that this impression came not from her resem- 
blance to any one else, but because she was so truly 
the embodiment of ideal motherhood. 

Deeper and subtler even than her unusual power to 
attract was her power to inspire and to comfort. The 
most discouraged and the most sinful felt renewed hope 
in her presence, while those whose hearts were breaking 
under bereavement found new power to believe in love 
that does not die and in continued fellowship. 

She had suffered greatly in various ways. She had 
come to believe in God unreservedly. Her faith was 
as natural and as simple as a child's, and she spoke of 
it as simply as she might have done of some rare 
elixir that had been given her and that had brought her 
strength and peace. It follows, that she never met a 
soul that did not respond to hers, that she was loved and 
trusted beyond any other woman that I have ever 
known, and that, all unconsciously to herself, " act- 
ing the law she lived by without fear/' she won an 
influence and left a memory that became a living 
power to those who had known her. Faithful in 
every relation in life, to every duty, and to every soul 



COUNTER CURRENTS 9 

to whom she was led, she was an absolutely unfor- 
gettable woman. 

These imperfect sketches of my father and mother 
are as exact as, after many years' experience with many 
lives, and a completed knowledge of their entire lives, 
their earlier and their later days, I can make them. 

It will easily be seen that, in early life, they had 
developed positive, but contrasting, characters, — the 
one, to outward appearance, cold, analytic, question- 
ing, and to a certain extent self-indulgent; the other, 
tender, spiritual, believing, and absolutely self -forget- 
ful: and from them united in me two distinct indi- 
vidualities. 

Born in Scotland in the later years of the eighteenth 
century, two very unlike early environments had 
tended to form these contrasting characters. 

My father was an only child, of wealthy parentage, 
to whom nothing was denied, and whose future seemed 
to promise all that love and wealth and fine natural 
gifts could secure to him. His mother died in his early 
manhood, just before he had completed the study of his 
profession, and, quite broken down by grief, his phy- 
sician ordered a sea voyage for him. 

England was then at war with France. The vessel 
on which he sailed, while still in sight of land, was 
visited by a press gang, and every man on board, save 
the captain and the officers needed to get the vessel 
back into port, was impressed into the British navy. 

For a year a common sailor, associating with men 
many of whom he loathed, and exposed to miseries of 
which he could never speak calmly, only his Scotch 
conscience saved him from suicide. Then some 



10 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

accident revealed the fact that he was an educated man 
and a fine letter-writer, and he was removed from the 
forecastle to a stateroom, to serve as private secretary 
to his captain. He proved so valuable that seven 
years passed before he was allowed to go ashore in any 
port where he could have claimed release as an im- 
pressed British subject. I do not know that he heard 
from home in all those years, although a few of his 
letters reached his friends. 

Reaching home at length, he found that his father 
had been remarried, to a woman below his own station, 
that the young lady to whom he had been engaged had 
been forced into an unwelcome and undesirable mar- 
riage, and that his guardian had embezzled the fortune 
that had been left to him by his mother. 

Thus homeless in reality, penniless, and with all his 
early hopes broken, he faced a world that had given him 
ashes for bread, darkness for sunshine; and he went to 
meet the future, a man very different in hope and in 
prospects from the one he might have been but for 
these inexplicable experiences. 

Some years later he met my mother, and she brought 
to him renewed hope and joy, and at least acquiescence 
in a life that he could never fully understand. 

My mother's life, on the contrary, began in a very 
humble home, filled with children and abounding in the 
most unselfish love and happiness. Not what might 
be done for the benefit of one member of the family, 
but what each might do for every other was the law 
of that simple home. An inherited faith, that of the 
"true Covenanters/' had come down through genera- 
tions, and still had such power over them that they, too, 



COUNTER CURRENTS 11 

like some of their ancestors in whose memory they glo- 
ried, would, if need were, have bravely suffered the loss 
of all things for it. God in Jesus Christ and eternal 
life seemed as real to each member of that family as 
their own existence. 

Their father, a veritable priest of the Most High 
in his own household, and a man rich also in all natural 
endowments, left his indelible stamp upon each of his 
children; and later they went out into the world 
able to endure as seeing the invisible, because they had 
seen a visible servant of the Most High, able also to 
get all possible gladness out of the best things of earth. 
Poor as they were in worldly wealth, even to-day the 
influence of that home suggests to me, who never saw 
it, only happiness, sunshine, the noblest thinking and 
highest living. 

Thus from two homes separated by utterly unlike 
conditions this man and this woman came together to 
create a new home of their own. Changes came with 
the passing years. For a time comparative wealth 
surrounded them. Then a financial reverse that 
swept over America, where they were now living, 
touched them heavily, through no fault of theirs. A 
little later, in a New England home, in very plain sur- 
roundings, my own life began. 

I have dwelt thus fully on my antecedents, to explain 
a nature that, as time went on, found itself anxious 
to believe in God, yet disposed to question everything, 
but held to its search after God, by the influence of the 
strongest and holiest personality I was ever to meet in 
the flesh. 

From my father came the critical, reticent, mate- 



12 DOES GOD COMFORT f 

rialistic temperament, that questioned everything, hu- 
man and divine, until it seemed to be proved. From 
my mother came my instinctive search for God, and 
my somewhat peculiar way of estimating earthly 
values which I shall soon indicate. Humanly speak- 
ing, all that I have learned of God's power to guide and 
to comfort came to me because my mother so truly 
made him real to me. Teaching me unconsciously, 
by her way of loving, the height and depth of human 
love, she made it imperative that I should seek to know 
the God who had made her what she was. One begins 
with one's mother. Blessed the soul that goes on with 
its mother to her God and its God. 



CHAPTER III 



POOR OR RICH 



Poor, I suppose the majority would say, though I 
came into my little world at a time when everybody 
was poor, compared by present standards. I do not 
remember that there was any special contrast between 
the furnishings in my own home and those in the homes 
of any of my playmates. We had some handsome pieces 
of furniture that had remained after the break in the 
family fortunes before referred to, and with the happy 
faculty I always possessed of enjoying to the utmost 
whatever about me was enjoyable, I remember these 
pieces only; all the later ones have faded from my 
memory. Still, as I do not recall any carpets save 
homemade ones, and few books and pictures, and as 
we never had a servant (though for that matter only 
one family in that New England town did have that 
blessing or that bane), we must have been poor; but 
I still believe, as I did then, that in all the world 
the sun shone on, there was no other child quite 
so happy, quite so indescribably well provided for, 
as I. 

The first thought that I can clearly remember was 
the exquisitely comfortable one that my mother was 

13 



14 DOES GOD COMFORT 7 

the very best mother in all the world, and that the sun 
always shone where she was. A little odd it seems to 
me now, that the very first thought that I recall should 
have proved, as it did, the germ thought of all my later 
comparisons of good and ill fortune. I did not know 
why I thought it then. I did not even know who the 
I was that was thinking it; I only thought it and 
hugged the thought to my baby heart, — for I was less 
than four, — and felt an exceeding warmth and glad- 
ness. Still, I know now that we were poor. Facts that 
I learned in later years proved to me that in those very 
days my mother was bearing burdens that would have 
daunted any soul less strong in faith in God and in 
unselfish devotion to her family. But for me, always, 
until I was ten, there was nothing that I could ask or 
think of, that I did not possess, or something that I 
thought was even better, in its place. 

One item, very small to me then, indeed quite unno- 
ticed, doubtless had much to do with my physical 
comfort, — my mother was a notable housekeeper, 
notable even in those days, when not to be a good 
housekeeper was discreditable; and I remember with 
special delight the times when I was promoted, as I 
grew in years, to little .posts of helpfulness, — as I 
thought, — hinderings as they must often have been. 
Our home shone with cleanliness from the cellar to 
the attic. It was always clean and consequently there 
were no distressing days of house-cleaning; while the 
table, not by any means an expensive one, was never 
forgotten by any who shared the hospitality of our 
home; and there were no "ups and downs" to that 
table; my mother never prepared for company, she 



POOR OR RICH 15 

simply shared with any chance guest what had been 
prepared for her own family. 

It was this power of welcoming others, in proportion 
to their needs, to a whole-hearted sharing in the very 
best that she herself possessed that made my mother's 
home a veritable haven of comfort and delight to all 
who crossed its threshold. "The gift without the 
giver" was never offered in her welcoming hand. To 
her, there were neither rich nor poor, cultured nor un- 
cultured, saint nor sinner; they were all souls, the 
children of the Heavenly Father, whether they knew 
it or not, — and each one came to her as one of a family 
comes home, sometimes after long wandering, prodigals 
who knew that, hating sin with intensest hatred, she 
pitied the sinner in proportion to his need. She did 
the welcoming; but my father, different as was his 
temperament, never said her nay. A little oddly, with 
all her generosity, she was most economical; nothing 
ever went to waste. 

In all the intervening years, and it is now long since 
she went to her rest, whenever I have met any one who 
had known my mother, I have had renewed evidence of 
the strength of the bonds that bound other souls to 
hers, and drew them irresistibly Godward, drew them 
Godward, not by words about God or by any seeming 
effort, but by an unusual influence that seemed to 
come from something above herself. No one could 
define it, but each felt it. 

Even in my earliest childhood, I instinctively realized 
that it was not in external ways that my mother differed 
so much from other people, as in ways that I could 
not then understand. Later, I have realized that 



16 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

she was as far above me then, if I may be understood 
in saying it, as God now is. She was as God to me 
then. 

Of course I loved my father and my brothers. Of 
course a thousand little things brought me happiness 
every hour. I did not know it, but I had a passionate 
love for everything that was beautiful. I was alive 
in every nerve and sense of my body; and as I have 
said before, I realize now that if there ever was a happier 
child in all the world, it must have been because that 
other child had a larger nature, — as mine was filled 
with perfect happiness to its utmost limit ; and in and 
through and all about me was that ever swelling ocean, 
wave upon wave, of love for my mother. 

Thus had my mother laid unconsciously a founda- 
tion of love, human, indeed, but in proportion as it 
was perfect, bound sometime to make the soul, once 
absolutely satisfied in it, turn to God, seeking Him at 
first blindly, but most honestly, and finding — ah, 
well ! I can describe to a certain extent what my 
mother was and is to me, and I can tell a little of what 
I have found in God, what I have begun to find; but 
what I have found is as a drop in an ocean's wealth, 
all I need to-day, an inexhaustible supply. As to- 
morrow's needs come, and as eternity's to-morrows 
come, one by one, may I not believe that the supply, 
inexhaustible to-day, will deepen and expand in pro- 
portion to whatever need I shall find as I press ever 
onward, in the larger life toward God? 

Once at rest in God, once sure that one has found the 
Life that cannot die, the Truth that cannot fail, the 
Way that must forever lead onward and upward, one 



POOR OR RICH 17 

loses all fear of loss; one looks through dauntless eyes 
at all that existence can bring. 

May I not believe that to my soul the time shall surely 
come, even while still bound in the flesh, when death 
and distance and silence shall be no actual barrier to a 
love and communion satisfying the soul as it was never 
satisfied in the days of sweetest and strongest earthly 
fellowship ? 



CHAPTER IV 



THE TEST INFALLIBLE 



It is not my purpose to describe in detail the various 
steps by which I was led to believe that to know God 
was the supreme good. The varied experiences that 
moulded my life as my years went by were only such as 
are common in the average home, to the average child, 
— with a difference, the power of one soul that knew 
God, and loved Him in proportion to that knowledge, 
over the soul of her child striving to understand her and 
to be worthy of her love. 

I have sufficiently indicated the heredity that might 
have made me question everything that I could not, at 
least to my own satisfaction, demonstrate, and which, 
even under the most favorable conditions of assured 
faith, has made me care little for shibboleths and look 
upon all creeds, even when most helpful, as human, 
and bound to be enlarged as the race grows near to 
God. 

Perhaps I have cared less for these things than I 
might have, if by some reason that I cannot yet explain 
I had not from the very first — that is, as soon as I 
knew anything about Jesus Christ — taken into my 
heart His own test of discipleship, " By this shall all men 
know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to 

18 



THE TEST INFALLIBLE 19 

another/ ' I do not of course know when I first heard 
it nor when I began to apply it, but I lived under the 
light of it. I mean, I saw it daily reflected in the life 
that I loved best on earth, and whatever else was real 
or was not real in the world about me, before I was 
ten, I knew that my mother owed her power of loving 
and serving to the Christ whose disciple she was. 

I had a more or less thoughtful brain, and very early 
studied as carefully as I could the evidences regarding 
the actual life of Christ on earth, and always, as I grew 
older, noted more and more carefully how people met 
or failed to meet His test of discipleship. 

By degrees my eyes — I mean my mental eyes — 
centred their gaze more and more strongly upon my 
mother's life. I used to think to myself, "If Jesus 
Christ has had power to make one life perfect, why 
not many, why not all?" She had never any thought 
that her wide-awake, fun-loving daughter was looking 
every day into her face for the reflection of Jesus 
Christ's, but it was so. 

I have before indicated that I was an unusually 
happy child. Indeed, I think the impression that I 
produced, ordinarily, till I was long past my teens, was 
of irrepressible gayety; and it required my strongest 
efforts to keep myself moderately staid, even after I 
became a professing Christian and felt that I ought to 
walk most circumspectly. I make this statement 
simply to show that no ordinary observer would have 
suspected for a moment that such a very lively girl 
ever thought of looking into any person's face for 
an expression of the love that proved its kinship to 
Jesus Christ. 



20 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

I had my friends, but my mother was the only per- 
son who really knew the depth of my thinking as well 
as the strength of my loving. Always, as the days 
and months and years passed by, my love for her grew 
with my growth and deepened with my own develop- 
ment, and as I look back upon those years, those 
beautiful, blessed years, — beautiful and blessed despite 
the lack of many things, — I see now, even more clearly 
than I felt then, that her life in Christ was the quicken- 
ing power in my love for her and therefore in all that 
made life most worth living to me. I know now that, 
from my very babyhood, everything that she did for 
others, every appeal that was made to her, lifted her 
in my eyes and drew me after her. 

At first I was not conscious of it, but now I know that 
always I looked at others through questioning eyes, and 
that from the beginning, hungry as I have been for 
human love, I have cared less that people should love 
me, than that they should- be worthy of my love. I 
could not help it, I was born so, born so, perhaps, 
because I was her child and also my father's. 

Yes, we were poor; but as I look back at the wealth 
of that home, I feel again, as I felt through all the years, 
even when the pressure was hardest, that there was 
not in the whole world, and never had been, a home 
that could have been so much to this especial me as 
that was. I cannot recall one unkind word. Rather 
strangely, I cannot recall a fear for the future. Still 
more strangely, I do not recall that my mother ever 
censured me but twice. Ordinarily she looked right 
over the imperfections and lacks in my daily deeds, at 
the little girl she was expecting me yet to be, at the 



THE TEST INFALLIBLE 21 

noble Christian woman that according to her faith I 
was yet to become. 

In the meantime her one thought, her one aim — 
and one understood it without any conscious effort 
on her part — was to help everybody to the extent of 
her ability, and for herself, to know more and more of 
the love of God in Jesus Christ. 

And so I came into my early girlhood, morally certain 
that the noblest character I knew in the world owed its 
power of loving to the fact that she was a disciple of 
the Lord Jesus. Hence He whom I had never seen 
became hardly less real to me than she who stood beside 
me in the flesh. Unconsciously, the test had worked 
night and day before me from my^ first thoughtful 
moment, and the love of God had been made real to me ; 
and thus I had taken my first step toward finding 
absolutely satisfying love, love that was immortal, as 
well as satisfying. Behind my mother's face I had 
caught a glimpse, faint, perhaps, but real, of the face 
of Jesus Christ. I had learned what He could be to 
her in the ordinary ways of life, — on the common 
heights and depths, in the dark days and in the bright 
days ; and what He could make her able to be to others, 
— out of her poverty making many rich. And now 
I was to learn my first real lesson in God's power to 
comfort. 

As I grew older, care deepened about our home and 
into it came the sorest sorrow of my mother's life, the 
death, under distressing circumstances, of her eldest 
son, a young man of unusual promise, whom she loved 
and leaned upon with a love and trust that his charac- 
ter fully justified. 



22 DOES GOB COMFORT f 

Year by year I had seen her comforting and strength- 
ening others all about her who were in sorrow and 
distress , always able to minister to them. Now I was 
to see her, in a sorrow I have never seen equalled, turn 
to God in agony that no human hand could soothe. 
I had never seen such suffering before; and, strange to 
say, for I have seen many other sufferers since those 
long- vanished days, I have never since seen it surpassed. 
It seemed as if every possible element of distress came 
to her in that death. She made no rebellious outcry; 
she was very silent, but night and day when alone, she 
walked the floor in her agony, and, if she thought her- 
self entirely alone, subdued groans attested her break- 
ing heart. 

Suddenly one night, in the very depths, God spoke 
peace to her soul, and she came from her chamber in 
the morning, calm, gentle, and with the sunrise of the 
eternal morning in her eyes. And from thenceforth, 
for more than twenty years, she walked steadfastly 
forward in the light of that peace. 

To me, wondering with intensest fear as to what 
would be the effect of all this anguish upon my mother, 
and why, if she had told the truth to others about God's 
power to comfort, He did not comfort her, this change 
in her, this coming back to peace again, taught the first 
conscious lesson of God's actual power to comfort; 
and I had taken my second step, though I knew not 
that I had taken any, toward finding God. 



CHAPTER V 



A CALL AND A RESPONSE 



To the prophet of old standing in his exile on the 
mountain, and watching for the manifestation of 
God, neither the whirlwind, the earthquake, nor the fire 
revealed Him, — only the " still small voice. " Doubt- 
less many a soul has been forced to think of God and to 
seek after Him if haply he might find Him, by the 
disastrous effects of whirlwinds of passions, of earth- 
quakes of tottering hopes, and of fires that have burned 
and blasted the strength and joy of his life, forcing 
him, as it were, to seek God for strength to live, lest, 
not finding Him, he should curse Him and die. 

To me came neither the whirlwind, the earthquake 
nor the fire, in the most momentous evening that I was 
to know. 

Strange to say, always an attendant at church, al- 
ways living in the holy light reflected from the saint- 
liest of lives, and believing in God as truly as one can 
whose faith is not founded on one's own experience, I 
had never had any consciousness of sin, and was nearly 
sixteen before I ever seriously considered my personal 
relation to God. 

I have more than once intimated that my love for 

23 



24 DOES GOD COMFORT f 

my mother would have absolutely satisfied me, had 
there been no other deep springs of happiness given 
me, but for some reason, and quite independently of 
conditions, my life was a peculiarly joyous one. I 
was passionately fond of books, capable of the most 
intense delight in everything that was beautiful in 
nature and in art. I had a large circle of friends, and I 
was conscious of no lack, save that I was wise enough 
to realize, as I grew older, that nothing earthly is 
permanent. Young as I was, I could foresee the days 
when the mourners would go about the streets and desire 
should fail. I knew that my mother must die, and I 
had always intended to become a Christian when she 
died, and not till then. In the meantime I was having, 
and expecting to have, all the happiness possible to a 
temperament like my own. But a day came that marked 
a sudden and permanent change in my life's plan, and 
— if conversion means the turning of a life — my con- 
version. 

I remember that Sunday. It was a cool evening in 
October. A revival was in progress a few miles distant, 
and several of my friends had that day joined the church. 
One who had witnessed the exercises was describing 
them to me, and I stood listening to the account. 

As I have said, it was cool, and at the beginning of 
the talk I laid my clasped hands on the drum of our 
heater. When I laid my hands there, I had not a 
thought of personal interest in the subject. As I stood 
listening, the thought came to me strongly and clearly, 
like the echo of the " still small voice/' — and I have 
known for many a year that God was truly in that 
voice, — " If you are ever going to become a Christian, 



A CALL AND A BESPONSE 25 

why not now?" and before I lifted my hands from that 
heater I had responded to that call from the depths of 
my soul, "God helping me, I will." 

I said nothing to my caller of the new motive in my 
life, but as soon as he had departed, went to my room, 
took my Bible, read the third chapter of St. John, 
knelt down and prayed thus, "O God, my mother's 
God, teach me to know Thee and to know myself." I 
do not remember another original word, but provi- 
dentially, as I later came to think, the Lord's Prayer 
came into my heart, and I repeated it sentence by 
sentence, trying as well as I could to understand it, 
and to mean what I said in repeating it. 

I cannot tell why, but that prayer seized my soul, 
and I do not think I have ever since knelt in prayer 
without making it part of my petitions. And I have 
been astonished to find the heights and depths to 
which and through which that prayer carries the soul 
that clings to it. 

In the whole exercise, I had not a particle of emotion. 
Some impulse that I did not understand had taken 
hold of me, had come into my life, and if there was a 
God, a living God, not the remote and indefinite 
Being I had called God up to that moment, I was willing 
to be led by any steps that would bring me to Him, 
that would make Him real to me, and make me true 
to Him, and true to myself. I did not in the slightest 
degree realize it, but entirely without spiritual life I 
had unconsciously placed myself in direct connection 
with the strongest spiritual force in the universe — 
with God ; and I was to prove that, as the electric cur- 
rent finds the hand that touches the wire, God would 



26 DOES GOB COMFORT? 

inevitably find me if I continued to touch Him by the 
sincere desire to find Him. 

Ready to be found, and ready also to take any step 
and every succeeding step that should lead me God- 
ward, I rose from my knees, conscious only of inex- 
pressible ignorance about God, and leaving my room, 
entered again the family circle. My mother was ab- 
sent, ministering to a sick neighbor, and in the hour 
or two that intervened before her return, I had taken 
my first practical steps in " walking alone " Godward. 

I have so often smiled at my first real effort at being 
"good," and yet it was a very genuine effort. A tem- 
porary member of the family had a most unpleasant 
manner and affected every one disagreeably. It was 
fairly easy to be courteous to him, but to do things 
whole-heartedly for him had been more than I could 
always accomplish. That evening, the moment I 
appeared, he made a querulous demand for something, 
in his most unpleasant tones, and I entirely surprised 
myself, whatever the effect on him, by meeting the 
demand with ready cordiality ; and I am glad to say 
that I was able to retain that manner in my subsequent 
relations with him, even if it was often much harder 
for me than then. 

I am aware that this was in itself a very insignifi- 
cant matter. It was important solely for the fact that 
it was the first time in my life when I had tried to do 
anything for Christ's sake. I had often done things 
for my mother's sake, and never without deep gladness 
that I could do anything to serve her, but never before 
had I looked beyond her for a higher motive than 
human love; and it was, as it proved, the very first 



A CALL AND A RESPONSE 27 

step, the feeble step of a little child, in the effort to 
find the path of Christly service in which she was to 
tread for many years, never doing any great things, 
but many a small one, and more and more whole- 
heartedly as she " followed the gleam " that led her 
more and more steadfastly after the breathings of the 
" still small voice." 

In a little while my mother returned, and as soon 
as we were alone I told her all about my new decision, 
— that I meant to seek God with my whole heart, and 
that I meant to do everything that I possibly could to 
aid me in finding God. 

I told her frankly that I did not feel that I 
was a sinner, and that I was afraid that it was go- 
ing to be very hard for me to obtain any real faith 
in God. 

"My one motive, mother/' I said, "is to become so 
much like you that we can never be separated even 
when you die; and perhaps God won't have me on 
those terms." 

My mother looked at me, turned the light of those 
beautiful, dark eyes down deep into my soul, and said: 
" Dear, God knows how to lead human souls to Himself, 
even by feeble, human hands; and if you do really 
want to find Him, for any motive, and will follow Him 
one step at a time, He will lead you until you do find 
Him, and care a thousand fold more for Him than for 
any gift that He has given you. And He will teach 
you to know yourself also, and when you know your- 
self truly, you will know how unlike you are to God; 
and then you will find your consciousness of sin. One 
step at a time, dear, and simply holding on moment 



28 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

by moment to your desire to find God, and you will 
surely find Him." 

Then she knelt down and prayed for me and I prayed 
again. She asked God to give me just what I needed 
to lead me to Himself, and I said, "Lord, I will take 
just what Thou givest me and do the best I can." 
And my mother and I had had our first hour of prayer 
together. The last was to be on the night when heaven 
seemed already opened to her, and I knelt beside her, 
holding her dying hands, and thanking God with all my 
soul that those hands had led me to Him, that I had 
truly found Him, found a love even more real than my 
mother's, a love that had glorified my life, even in its 
darkest hours, and made all sorrow and care and pain 
but ministering angels on my homeward way, and 
death and distance no real barriers even in human 
loving. 

My mother was still to stand by my side in my 
efforts to find and to serve God, for more than fifteen 
years. Then she was to go forward into His immediate 
presence, and I to follow, alone, but not alone, ever with 
the sense of perfected companionship those only know 
who learn, by evidence they may not doubt, that the 
dead do not forget, that the communion of saints does 
not end, that the highest fellowship may exist in ever 
growing sweetness between two souls, one gone for- 
ward into the perfect life, the other quietly following 
after, till it, too, shall attain. 

I did not know all this, then; I was studying the first 
letter in the alphabet of Christian experience. I had 
felt only the first throb of spiritual life, yet did not 
even know that my heart was beating with a new pulse ; 



A CALL AND A RESPONSE 29 

but it was, and I had taken my first conscious step 
Godward. 

Here, then, I stood, a young girl, almost a child in 
years, yet with an intense personality, and capable of 
making almost any kind of a woman, — a strong, un- 
selfish, and faithful one, if led steadily upward by a 
" Power without myself working for righteousness"; or 
a passionate, exacting, headstrong woman, who, finding 
her idols dust and embittered by earthly loss, might 
have learned to scoff at human truth, and laugh at 
the notion of a God proving his existence in whispers, 
and wreaking the misery of chastisement on souls 
whom He wanted to conquer. 

One soul had truly interpreted God to me, and, de- 
spite the fact that I as yet knew Him not, had made 
me long to share the indefinable power that He had 
given to her; and that longing alone, without any con- 
sciousness of need on my part or any premonition of 
the dangers one side of my temperament would inevi- 
tably lead me into unless I was led by the Spirit of 
God, had made me turn an attentive ear to that " still 
small voice" whispering, "Why not seek Him now?" 

As I look back to those long ago days, as I recall 
all the existing conditions then surrounding me, and 
stand again in memory on that forever vanished point of 
time in which my soul responded to that suggesting 
voice, it seems true to me beyond question that that 
moment was the decisive one in my soul's life. I knew 
it not, but all my previous life had been leading me up 
toward that moment, and from that moment one of 
two motives was to control me. I was to go on seek- 
ing to know and to serve the Highest, and to prove all 



30 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

that that knowing and that finding could lead me to: 
imperishable gain, immortal fellowship, friendships 
that cannot die, and service that blesses in proportion 
as it costs, and, however imperfect, links the humblest 
soul with its divine Master. 

These lay waiting in the coming years, if I listened 
and followed the voice. Or, refusing to hearken to 
the voice that was not a voice, only the breathing of a 
spirit to a spirit, I was to go on drifting, satisfied as 
long as I could be with the things that perish with the 
using, and laying up my treasure for the moths of 
time and the rusts of years to consume; and, carrying 
all the strength and passion and tenderness, latent 
still in the soul so soon to be a woman's soul, to meet 
alone — as every soul must meet alone — the bur- 
dens, the temptations, the bereavements that are the 
inevitable lot of every life that has to face a long vista 
of mortal years. 

To-day, more than for any other hour that I have 
known, I thank my God for that hour and its solemn 
decision. I see again, and I believe that I shall forever 
see in memory, that plain old sitting-room, with its 
air of sunset peace, and the joyous girl listening to the 
idle talk that was to enshrine forever within its memory 
the whisper of the " still small voice/' "Why not begin 
to seek God now?" And I see her turn to the seeking 
and begin the life of a woman in earnest. 



CHAPTER VI 

SEEKING THE LIFE ETERNAL 

It was such a different world, the next morning, 
and yet it was the same old world. The Disagreeable 
Man was still very much in evidence, and so were hosts 
of other little things that were hardly more agreeable 
than he ; and the irrepressible temperament of the girl 
was the same, and all that was beautiful and delightful 
in the world was throbbing with life as joyously as on 
previous days; yet, in reality, nothing was the same. 
Into what seemed to have been a vacuum before, or 
at least an unrecognized part of her being, had entered 
a new and dominating motive, and below every other 
thought lived this: "I am pledged to learn all that I 
can about God, and to do whatever I believe to be His 
will, and to accept whatever He gives to me." 

The conditions outlined were comprehensive beyond 
my faintest imagination, but how great was the igno- 
rance with which I faced the upward way in which I 
had elected to walk. How little I knew how to take 
one step wisely, with perhaps one exception. I was 
wise enough to know that if I was going to be a genuine 
Christian, I must at once avow myself one, or at least 
a seeker after God. 

31 



32 DOES GOD COMFORT f 

I was so gay in temperament that no one could be 
serious in my presence, and the one effect that I had 
produced on my friends, up to that time, had been of 
unceasing vivacity and liveliest badinage. 

I could not meet my friends on the old thoughtless 
footing, with any safety for myself or straightforward- 
ness toward them. Nothing could have led me into 
cant of any form, nor in those sunny years broken my 
love of fun or my delight in the joys of earth. But in 
all the past I had been frank toward every one, and I 
now went straight into the merriest group of my 
associates, and said to them, & propos of a revival just 
beginning in our own town, "I have made up my mind 
to become a Christian, and I am going to be as thorough 
a one as I know how to be." 

If I surprised them, and I had the fullest reason to 
believe that I did, they surprised me no less in turn, 
for it seemed to me that instinctively each of them 
did for me just what I had done for them, turned on 
me the light of one side of their natures hitherto unsus- 
pected, the side that was spiritual and thoughtful. 
Thus, at the very beginning of my Christian life, a frank 
avowal of my new attitude, brought to me the first 
fruits of the deepening joy in friendship, given to those 
that share together the best that the days bring to 
each. 

Henceforth I stood in a true light among my friends. 
I was my old self, with a difference, and they were 
their old selves, with a difference. They understood 
me and loved me all the more, and spoke to me as 
freely as I to them of the new truths that were becom- 
ing real to me, and affecting them also. And so I learned 



SEEKING THE LIFE ETERNAL 33 

the value of taking a stand, of being frank and true 
with one's friends, particularly in vital matters. 

I proved also, though I did not then appreciate its 
full blessedness, the inestimable value, at that par- 
ticular crisis, of the perfect confidence that had always 
existed betw r een my mother and myself. If it had not 
been the most natural thing in the world to tell her 
freely of my new motive in life, and almost as natural 
to speak freely of it to the friends I loved, it seems to 
me now very probable that after a while the impres- 
sion might have faded and my resolution to seek God 
have been abandoned. As it was, I was committed 
to my new quest, and I fared steadily forward in it. 

I have not the slightest desire to make this book 
autobiographical. It is the story of far too common a 
life to justify, for a moment, such a thought; but just 
because it is the story of a common life, the true story 
of a common life that was led by a power outside of 
itself to begin and to continue a quest for God and to 
find in God all that was truly sought, — power to 
believe, power to cleanse, power to sustain through 
all sorts of sorrows, power to comfort in the heaviest 
bereavements, power to "see through a glass/' and not 
always " darkly," after the vanishing ones, — it may 
help to show to other common lives the simplicity and 
certainty with which they, too, can find all that that 
unpremeditated decision led to my finding. 

Notice, please, that I say " all that was truly sought." 
I did not find all that I should have sought. But I 
realize, to-day, that had I asked for higher things as 
the days went on, much of the burden and sorrow of 
the later years would not have troubled me. At rest 



34 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

in God, I might have escaped the stress of the conflict; 
but I accepted too much as a matter of course the bur- 
den and heat of the day as it came ; and I had to strug- 
gle with many a temptation that could have had no 
power over me had I trusted less to my own strength 
and wisdom and been able to ask on all lines, simply 
for the " daily bread " of to-day, and not for some of that 
of to-morrow also. 

But when I began to go forward in my quest none 
of the experiences of the coming years lay outlined 
to my vision, and I went to meet them one step at a 
time. 

I smile gratefully when I remember how practical 
was my beginning and my continuance in my quest. 
I lived in a town where church lines were very sharp, 
for it was before the ending of the old religious exclu- 
siveness, and creeds were paramount and shibboleths 
strongly insisted upon. But I had heard the tones of 
Jesus Christ's voice calling me through my mother's, 
and neither differences in creeds, in shibboleths, nor in 
church lines troubled me. I went my own way after 
my Master, as did those who sought Him in the early 
days. 

I had been a great lover of general reading, but for 
three years now I studied the Bible almost exclusively, 
without commentaries or on denominational lines, and 
I tried to live as simply and truly as I would have, had I 
been among those who followed the Master when as yet 
forms did not exist. 

I do not mean to say that I was not a strict attend- 
ant upon church services. I was. I did not neglect 
a single opportunity of associating with Christians in 



SEEKING TEE LIFE ETERNAL 35 

religious worship, and I sought every possible way of 
serving others. I believed that Christ meant what He 
said when He proclaimed the Golden Rule, and I 
strove to live up to it. I took many things literally 
that perhaps, by my excessive devotion to them, were 
not helpful. 

But my wise mother kept her hand on my spiritual 
pulse, and somehow, always as I reached the danger 
line, some suggestive word from her, supplemented 
by the whisper of the " still small voice/' lifted me 
over the danger into broader pathways, and a more 
just conception of my real duties. 

For a while I was extremely anxious to know that 
I was a Christian, and to have warmer feelings toward 
God, and I often wondered why I could not see truth 
more clearly ; but I soon came to realize that I was too 
finite, too imperfect, to have any right to expect to 
understand any truth save as I lived by it, and that in 
proportion as I did this, it would become clear to me. 

Two passages of Scripture seemed almost like per- 
sonal messages: the one, " Neither pray I for these 
alone, but for all that shall believe on me through 
their words. " That seemed to say to me that Christ 
Himself had once prayed for me personally. The other, 
"If any man will do the will of My Father, he shall 
know of the doctrine. " From this I deduced the truth 
that to do the will of the Father in proportion as I 
knew it, would lead me to all the truth I needed to 
know. 

And I went steadfastly, if haltingly, forward, trying 
to do the will of the Father as I saw it ; and day by day, 
unconsciously receiving the answer to at least a part 



36 DOES GOD COMFOBT? 

of my first prayer, learning by the failures of my every- 
day life at least to know myself more and more truly, 
and thus preparing to know God, the Father, the Leader, 
the Helper of souls. 

And so the days and years went on, the sincerity of 
my search for God and my genuine desire to accept 
all truth wheresoever I found it and whithersoever it 
might lead me, inevitably broadening and perfecting 
my life as a whole. 

The great souls of the past, who had followed God 
and served their fellows, illumined and broadened my 
spiritual horizon. They spoke to me their individual 
messages, and whatever was of truth in them found me 
freed from whatever had hampered it in its first utter- 
ance, while the rest glided harmlessly by. Always, 
under all that I heard and read, was the consciousness 
of the personal Christ, emphasized to me by the most 
catholic human being I had known. 

And so, David, John, Paul, Calvin, Wesley, Faber, 
Robertson, Martineau, and many another unlike his 
brethren in all save his quest for truth, ministered to me 
of the best he had gathered, and thus I was being edu- 
cated by contact with the noblest minds I had found 
outside the New Testament as well as within. 

And why should I care for the barriers of creeds, 
when Toplady and Charles Wesley — at swords' 
points theologically — each from his own side of the 
shield could write, the one, "Rock of Ages," and the 
other, "Jesus, Lover of My Soul"? I loved their 
hymns, but I forgot the limitations that bound each 
to his own side of the shield, and so hindered his 
seeing the truth his brother saw. 



SEEKING THE LIFE ETERNAL 37 

In those days, too, I was unconsciously being made 
ready to meet the great storm of Biblical criticism and 
theological unrest already preparing to burst upon the 
world. The Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, Our 
Lord's two new commandments, and the simple story 
of His life and teachings, especially the Sermon on the 
Mount, and the story of the life as given by John, the 
twenty-third Psalm, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah 
(whoever wrote it), the eighth of Romans, the thir- 
teenth and fifteenth of First Corinthians, and the 
twelfth of Hebrews, contained for me truth enough to 
meet every human need ; and I confess that it did not 
matter much to me what they meant to Biblical critics, 
nor whether Genesis was as allegorical as Revelation, or 
not. I knew that I had needs that nothing I could 
find elsewhere in any degree satisfied. 

I knew, too, that in proportion as I abode in Christ 
and His words abode in me I should attain the highest 
level of which my life was capable on the earth. I 
knew, beyond the possibility of a cavil, what He had 
done for others; and nothing could shake my faith 
that it was a fact that one being clad in mortality had 
lived and died and risen from the dead and ascended 
into heaven, and could do for me to-day, even for me, 
what He had done for others whom I had known. 

I saw, too, clearly as it seemed to me, that if Jesus 
Christ was only a simple Jew, only a man like other 
men, he was the spiritual miracle of the ages, who, un- 
educated and with no accessory of material power, 
yet transcended the highest thought of the grandest 
brains ever active among men, a man whose stature 
the uplifting power of nineteen centuries has not yet 



38 DOES GOD COMFOBT? 

paralleled and never will, the Master of the world's 
spiritual force, the one man who knew God, the Father, 
and man, the Brother. 

I was not troubled by the missing link between the 
animal and man, for I believed Jesus Christ to be the 
missing link between man and God, and that to me 
seemed the paramount need. I could think it very 
probable that man was decidedly akin to his lower 
brethren ; nor did it trouble me when the days of crea- 
tion suddenly expanded from one hundred and forty- 
four hours to endless seons. Indeed, to my unscien- 
tific mind it seemed, if I may reverently say so, that 
the God who could wait in patience through millions 
of years for the development of His thought manward 
revealed His own infinity thereby, far more than He 
would have by the creation of the world in a brief 
time. It did not surprise me at all that theologians 
had made many a mistake in " thinking God's thoughts 
after Him/' any more than it seemed strange to me that 
perfectly sincere Jews felt that they had had the right 
to expect an imperial Messiah, and not a crucified King. 

And so, spiritually, I went on my upward way, hold- 
ing myself constantly committed by word and deed to 
my search for truth, and now and then beginning to 
see gleams of the light that never was on sea or land, 
— if I may so say, light from the world invisible, be- 
ginning to understand a little of the practice of the 
presence of God; and yet making many mistakes, 
striving very hard to do what a little child in the King- 
dom of God might have done very easily, had it for- 
gotten itself and trusted its Father wholly. 

Then, too, I learned that out of one's very mistakes 



SEEKING THE LIFE ETERNAL 39 

and weaknesses, if they be left with God in real humility, 
God can lift one as on healing crosses nearer to Himself; 
and so, as I grew humbler by testing my own weak- 
ness, I grew stronger. 

I do not care to refer to the material experiences in 
my life save to say that they had become both exacting 
and exhausting, so much so, that but for my practical 
faith, my natural buoyancy of temperament would 
have been sorely strained. I could never have given 
up and felt that life w r as not worth living, let what 
might have happened, for my mother was still with 
me; and then, as now, it had never seemed possible 
that any amount of care or trouble could have made me 
wish that I had never been born, for I could never doubt 
that my life had been one of God's good gifts to her, as 
hers had been the best, next Jesus Christ, to me. 

One day I understood, as in a flash of light, all the 
way in which I had thus far been led. I was passing 
through a particularly severe experience, and my soul 
sent up a dumb appeal to God, "Why are things as 
they are ? What possible good can come from these 
perplexing conditions ? Why do so many of my prayers 
seem to fall into the void and pass unanswered ? Why 
do I never attain the ideal life I see so clearly?" 

Then into the silence in my soul came a clear memory 
of my first real prayer, and I realized that, to the extent 
of my ability and willingness to receive it, God was 
answering that prayer. I certainly had learned to 
know myself as far as I had then come, and God had 
been opening to me clearer and clearer conceptions of 
Himself. I was beginning to see something of His holi- 
ness, of His justness, of His patience, and of His truth. 



40 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

These, I now realized, had been steadily growing 
clearer to me as I pondered His dealings with the world 
at large, while in His dealings with me personally I 
felt, beyond all possibility of doubting, that what would 
have hindered my spiritual growth He had been stead- 
ily withholding, that what I needed He had given me, 
often against my asking, but as a father gives to the 
child he loves ; and I bowed my head in clear recogni- 
tion and full acceptance of His will. Very weak, and 
conscious of my weakness, conscious of my utter need, 
I then entered into rest and strength unknown before, 
and I was ready, at last, to face and meet and to be 
lifted up by anything my Father could send me. 
Here, after long seeking, I had caught my first clear 
glimpse of the life eternal they share who come to know 
the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. 
I was ready for sorrow in its fulness and whatever of 
loss could come to me on the earth, and much was 
awaiting me in the oncoming years. Yet God was 
always to speak to me in the "still small voice, " to 
be peace and strength and victory to me. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF GRIEF 

My years had almost doubled since the Sunday 
evening so decisive in its results had come and gone, 
but in all the changes and growth that their passing 
had brought to me, the bond between my mother's 
soul and mine had steadily strengthened. Other strong 
friendships had come to me, and many a joy and sorrow 
had been mine, and some whom I loved dearly had 
passed on into the life immortal, my father among them, 
his passing hours shared and cheered by my mother as 
supremely as she had shared all the other days since 
she had known him. 

Always, from my earliest memory, the one sorrow 
that I had never been able to look forward to calmly 
had been the parting with my mother, that I knew was 
inevitable sometime. Gradually I had become strong 
enough to meet bravely all else that came ; but I could 
never even speak calmly of my mother if she was ill; 
I could not bear it, and I never could even imagine 
what I could do without her. 

The last months of the conflict between the North 
and the South were drawing to a close. Although an 
intense lover of freedom, from the beginning my mother 

41 



42 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

fully appreciated the position of the South and seemed 
to me to have a remarkable power of suffering with its 
people, although she believed that the victory of the 
North and the abolition of slavery were as desirable 
as inevitable. 

We had never ceased the practice of praying together 
that we had begun on that far-away Sunday evening, 
and her prayers proved to me that on scarcely any 
heart, North or South, lay a heavier burden than on 
hers, for both sections of the country. And whenever 
there was a great battle, no matter which side was 
victorious, a real distress rested on her for all who 
had suffered by it. 

The strain of the four years had told upon her heavily, 
and as the war drew toward its end I could see a 
strange detachment from this world, and a growing 
nearness to the other. Her prayers, her consciousness 
of the presence of God, her intensified recognition of 
the unchanged love and personal nearness of those who 
had gone on before her, were at times startling to me 
in their spiritual fervor and strangely uplifting power. 

In my early youth she had not felt at all sure that 
human bonds were immortal. She had once believed 
that in the life beyond God would so absorb the soul 
that lesser loves would cease to hold one ; and it came 
to me w T ith a great surprise, one day, when she said to 
me suddenly: — 

"Dear, I want to tell you something. You know we 
have often talked about continued memory and actual 
recognitions in heaven, and I have never seen these 
things as you have. But I have changed entirely in 
this respect. I believe now, as fully as you do, that 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF GRIEF 43 

souls remember, and that they care for each other in 
heaven even more truly than they did upon earth. 
I have come to believe that there is no forgetting ; 
and I want to say this to you, — I have even come to 
think it possible that God may let those who have gone 
beyond minister to those who are left behind. And so 
surely as I may, I will come to you and serve you." 

She kept that promise, but of that keeping I have 
never spoken. 

And so the closing days of her earthly life went by. 
Week by week the end of the war seemed hastening on, 
and I grew jubilant with hope. One day, late in Febru- 
ary, she said to me, " I do not think you will be able 
to feel as I do in regard to something, but it is borne 
in upon my mind that the President is going to be 
assassinated; and if he is, I am very certain that I 
shall die." 

I looked at her with astonishment. "What end 
could possibly be served by his assassination now?" 
I asked. "The war is virtually over, and he will deal 
with the South in justice and mercy, and I think they 
will understand that. I certainly cannot feel as you 
do in the matter. I only hope that you may live till 
he is assassinated." And I tried to make her see a 
more reasonable hope for the future of the South and 
the North, but I could not in the slightest degree 
weaken her impression. 

She was not personally depressed. For herself the 
fact that she might die, or, as she phrased it, "soon go 
home," seemed to make the present and the immediate 
future radiant, and to soften and glorify every memory 
of the past. 



44 DOES GOD COMFORT f 

Every day the impression of the President's approach- 
ing death deepened. There seemed little regret for 
him, for she had keenly felt his burdens, so soon to be 
lifted, and believed that heaven held more for him 
than earth could possibly hold, and for herself but one 
thing grieved her. Although the thought of the 
home-going filled her with constantly deepening joy, 
she loved me as truly as I loved her, and it was not 
easy to leave me behind her, even though she went to 
all that heaven meant to her. 

I still had not even the shadow of a fear for the 
President. I could only rejoice that the end of the 
conflict was assured. 

Good Friday, the fourteenth day of April, had come, 
and the North was glad in the dawn of peace. During 
the day something occurred that made it perfectly 
natural for me, although I had as yet no fear that we 
were soon to be parted, to tell my mother, more fully 
than I had ever told her before, all that her love and 
life had been to me. I showed her the very depths 
of my soul, and she could not help feeling both what 
her life had been to me and what her going would 
mean to me; for she believed what I said, that if I 
could retain her for years, even after she became a 
helpless invalid, I should thank God for it, as for a 
benediction. 

" Oh, don't say that, dear ! Rather ask God to let 
me go suddenly, if it be His will, — as soon as my work 
is done. We shall not be separated, no matter where 
we are." 

That was her last Friday afternoon. I had taken 
the sheaf of her whole life's harvesting from my life, 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF GRIEF 45 

and laid it in her hands ; and God was soon to let her 
"go home suddenly. " 

Saturday morning we had another precious hour, in 
which she gave me her last backward glance over her 
early life, and showed me how wondrously God had 
answered a memorable prayer offered for her, in one 
of the momentous periods of her life. It seemed as 
if the shadow of the President's coming death had been 
lifted, and we were sitting in the sweetness of an hour 
of perfect fellowship, with all the wealth of the past 
and all the joy of a present that took hold of immor- 
tality resting upon us. 

Then the door opened without a knock and the 
horrified face of a neighbor appeared, who said without 
preface : — 

"Abraham Lincoln was murdered last night, and 
Secretary Seward, and I don't know r how many more !" 

I do not remember that my mother spoke until the 
newsbearer had gone. She sank into a chair as she 
heard the fatal tidings, looked pitifully up to me, and 
said : " Oh, the poor South ! The poor South ! It has 
lost its best friend.'' It had, and I was about to lose 
mine. 

It is very hard for any one who felt President Lin- 
coln's death as we and many others at the North did 
to recall the first few hours after we heard of it; for 
it was not merely a national, it was also a personal, 
bereavement. Very soon I was to forget almost that 
it was a national sorrow, and think of it only as blended 
with the deepest sorrow that I had ever known or 
perhaps was to know. 

For a day or two, however, I thought of it only as a 



46 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

national loss. I could not believe it possible that my 
mother was going to die. She had shown great recu- 
perative power in very serious illnesses, and I felt that 
she must rally now, that she could not die. She could 
not eat indeed, but neither could I ; and she was very 
silent, but I understood that also, I thought. 

Sunday passed, and she slept, or seemed sleeping, 
most of the time. Monday morning she aroused; and 
for an hour or two we shared the most perfect com- 
munion I have ever known with any soul. It was to 
each of us as if we stood where words were not needed. 
There the peace of the Lord and absolute trust in each 
other so filled each soul, that neither sorrow nor fear 
nor trouble of any kind could disturb us. As I have 
recalled those hours, it has always seemed to me as if 
during their passing I had stood with her upon some 
mountain's summit where our Master stood beside us 
and the sweetness of His presence irradiated all the 
past and transfigured all that lay before us. 

It was in reality the ending of her conscious life 
with me, but I knew it not. I only knew that heart to 
heart, soul to soul, we stood beside each other in a 
union that neither care nor death nor anything but 
sin could break ; and I felt that I owned her as I had 
never owned her before, and I had no fear of any 
possible future. 

Then she went to sleep again, and although I did 
not realize it, when she awoke, she had passed outside 
the grasp of my detaining hands. 

Our physician, a most skilful one, said to me that, 
remembering her wondrous vitality, he still had hope 
that she would rally, and I held strongly to that hope 



THE TRANSFIGURATION OF GRIEF 47 

all through the night. But as the sun came up over 
the eastern hills, I remember a strange calmness with 
which the thought came home to me that she was to 
die, and that the last visible proof of love that I could 
give to her lay in helping her, by concealing my distress, 
to die undisturbed. And God gave me strength to stay 
by her in quietness and peace. 

So Tuesday wore away and the shadows of her last 
night fell upon the earth, and her hours of dying were 
upon her. Suddenly, it seemed as if some strange 
change had come. The physical pains of death were 
not loosed, — they were still strong, — but the spirit- 
ual glory of the transfigured rested upon her. Those 
whom she had loved, who had gone forward, appeared 
to be comforting and cheering her, as she was struggling 
in the deep waters, and most of all, the Lord Himself 
whom she had loved with all her soul, seemed to stand 
visibly beside her. Tones of such rapture as none of 
those who stood by her had ever imagined before fell 
from her lips. 

More than once, perhaps to assure myself that, in the 
glory into which she seemed already to have entered, 
she still remembered me, I said to her, " Mother, do 
you know me?" Each time, instantly, came the 
response, "Of course I know you, dear. Why should 
I not?" And then she would at once resume her 
words to those I could not see. 

Is it strange that, as the hours passed, I entirely for- 
got myself, and my soul was filled with unutterable 
joy for my mother and for all that God was leading her 
into, though every moment lifted her farther and farther 
from me? 



48 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

Finally she ceased to be able to articulate, but the 
beatific expression remained on her face; and at 
length, at noon, as the first stroke of the President's 
funeral bells pealed slowly forth, she raised one hand, 
placed it for a moment on her ear, laid it down, and 
was gone hence. 

I had long been holding those dying hands, kneeling 
beside her. Not a tear, not a thought of personal pain, 
came to me; and I rose from her side and walked the 
floor in an ecstasy second only to the one she had felt 
as she was entering the gates of the eternal city. 

I have never been able to explain my own experience. 
It was as if I had been lifted entirely above my own 
selfish self; as if I had been allowed to stand at the 
very gate of heaven, and see my mother enter in. All 
sense of personal loss vanished in the consciousness of 
her great gain. I had not a doubt of her continued life 
and of her unchanging love for me, and I had not a 
care for my personal future. She had gone home; 
she had entered into life and I was glad. God was 
comforting me as even she had not been able to comfort 
me in other days, in other losses. 

At length I personally knew God the Comforter, 
God the Eternal, in whom the tenderest human ties 
find their full perfection and their unending life. 

Suddenly it seemed to me that the height on which 
we had stood together on Monday morning was to be 
the symbol of the altitude from which our future fellow- 
ship was to go forward. My earthly life seemed to have 
broken in two while I knelt beside that bed of death. 
Everything of the past, save my mother, seemed to 
have been detached or lifted away from me, and I felt 



THE TBANSFIGURATION OF GBIEF 49 

as if I were to face an entirely new beginning of my 
life. It was a strange consciousness; almost as if I, 
too, had been through the gates of the grave, yet had 
been sent back to finish my uncompleted years ; never 
again to be the same. 

Intuitively I realized that something I could in no 
way explain had been given to me, and that although 
nothing could break the spell that bound the " vanished 
hand" or restore the " sound of a voice that was 
still," my mother's soul had come a thousand fold 
closer to mine in the hours of her dying, than even when 
we were welded together in the hour when I turned 
to seek God for her sake; and I seemed to have been 
uplifted infinitely nearer to God and to heaven, by her 
very going from me. I had been made strong with a 
strength, glad with a joy, and centred in a peace of 
which I had had no comprehension before. God be- 
came the strength of my heart, and I realized that, 
broken off from my own past, as it seemed, I had 
entered upon a phase of my quest after God that was 
to lead me to desire to know and to serve Him above 
every other desire. 

I cannot describe the strange expansion of soul that 
seemed given to me. I could not weep. I could only 
rest in God, and I stood beside my mother's open grave, 
looking, not so much at the casket resting before me, 
as into the bending sky above us. I did not weep even 
then. It was a perfect April day, and the sweet 
spring sunshine was all about us; and, strange to say, 
my soul sang with the joyousness of the spring, and 
with the full assurance of the Easter awakening 
awaiting my beloved and me, in God's own good time. 



50 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

Was it possible that this woman, turning from the 
grave that had taken down into its depths the very 
pulse of her human heart, as she turned away, could 
face calmly and strongly, with perfect peace, the lonely 
years that lay before her? 

Ah, yes ! It was well with her mother. It was to 
be well with her, for God remained, and He would give 
her grace to serve henceforward as for two ; and so she 
turned her steps earthward again, and went to meet the 
life that could never forget the baptism of peace and 
immortal love that had come to her as her mother passed 
on through the gates, into "the city that hath foun- 
dations." 



CHAPTER VIII 



FORBID THEM NOT 



As one looks backward and scans the great experi- 
ences of life, one cannot help noting how often it seems 
true that one experience must be completed and parted 
from, before another comes forward to take its place. 
But when I turned back to the daily duties and 
cares of life again, alone, I was not thinking of com- 
ing joys or sorrows; I was thinking simply of how I 
could most truly live the life that opened to me on 
that April day. 

As I have said, I took up life again, sorely bereaved, 
and yet with a sense of an expanding life unknown 
before. New work, new duties, came to me. The new 
duties led to new friendships. 

With my friends, some of them among the noblest 
and highest souls I have ever known, I was to learn 
duly the sweetest lessons that simple friendship has 
ever taught me. They were to walk worthily by my 
mother's side in helping me to apprehend unwritten 
laws of fellowship and mutual service. 

After a time a new home opened its doors, and I 
entered in, carrying, to those who shared it with me 
and to those who entered only its outer circle, the tender 
and comforting touch of unseen hands, and the influ- 

51 



52 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

ence that had never ceased of that far-away Sunday 
evening that had given the permanent impulse to all 
the after years. 

To this new home, also, were to come many joys, 
many sorrows, and many cares. There were kindred 
tastes and kindred principles and, to a large degree, 
kindred experiences. Unlike in minor respects, in 
essentials there was marked resemblance, and the 
ability to hold each other's strong confidence through 
all life's future changes. Each had a passionate love 
for little children, and when the day dawned that our 
little daughter came to the hearts that were waiting 
for her, there was no happier home in all the land than 
the one that welcomed her. 

I need not try to describe her. I could not, if I would, 
say all that she seemed to us, indeed all that I think 
she really was if the words of others could be trusted. 
She was very fair, her eyes were blue, her hair golden, 
and even as a little baby all her motions w r ere graceful 
and joyous. She grew apace and filled our home with 
the indescribable and unforgettable sunshine and joy 
that a gladly welcomed little child must always bring. 

We had supposed, before her coming, that we knew 
something of the character of the happiness a little 
child would bring to us, but in the depth of our delight 
in her, we learned that we had had but the faintest 
conception of the ever-welling gladness that lay before 
us. 

I will not dwell upon her developing days. Before 
she was two we learned that the happiness we had sup- 
posed complete could be made still deeper ; for when a 
little son was born to us, we found that the hearts of 



FORBID THEM NOT 53 

a father and a mother grow larger and richer as child 
after child is given to them. 

I am not, however, to dwell on the happy days that 
went so swiftly by. Any one can strike a harp of joy. 
I am writing of the ways in which God has comforted 
me, and not of the days in which He has simply blessed 
me. 

One or two friends who had noted my almost ecstatic 
love for my children had told me that I must not love 
them so intensely, that it was dangerous so to set the 
heart on one's children. 

" What would you do if you should lose one of your 
children?" said one of these anxious friends one day. 

I do not think that, as a rule, a happy mother ever 
realizes that it is possible that her child will die. At 
all events I had not before faced that question; but 
I looked up at my friend and said, after a moment's 
silence: "Do? I should thank God that He had given 
them to me forever, and go on loving them with all 
my soul, wherever they were." And I went on, only 
loving them more and more day by day. 

I thank God that I did, and that all the love that it 
was possible for my nature to give, I gave them. 
I remember, however, that one day, when they were 
playing together, laughing with mutual glee as Harry 
buried his baby hands in Mary's sunny curls, the thought 
suddenly flashed across my heart, what could I do if 
God called away either of my darlings, and which of 
the two could I live without. Within a year God 
had more than answered my question. He had taken 
them both to Himself. And yet again He had com- 
forted me, in His own mysterious way of comforting, 



54 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

not in my way, but in His. And He had made me 
strong and calm. 

I have said little of Harry. He was Mary's opposite 
in every physical aspect. He was dark as she was fair, 
reserved as she was demonstrative, singularly mature 
for a little child, and with a look, in the deepest and 
darkest eyes that I have ever seen in a baby's face, that 
revealed a strange power of loving in the soul behind 
the eyes. 

The two babies were inseparable. Their delight in 
each other grew day by day, and it used to seem to me 
that nothing could add to the happiness of our home 
or our joy in living; and always through it all ran the 
consciousness that my mother knew our joy and shared 
in our caring for our little ones. In a little while this 
last thought was to become of exceeding sweetness to 
me. 

One day, by a strange oversight on the part of one 
who loved him much, and who, I am thankful to say, 
never knew that she had caused the accident, Harry 
had a terrible fall, striking upon his head. 

The summer was a very trying one, all over the coun- 
try, for little children ; and although we were in a fa- 
vored locality, it was very hot even there, and Harry 
was teething. He had a strong constitution, but as 
the weeks went by after his fall, it became evident that 
the brave little life was growing constantly weaker, 
Mary in the meantime watching him with wistful, 
wondering eyes, and using every possible baby wile to 
gladden the little brother she loved so much. 

But neither Mary's love nor any other love could 
detain the vanishing life. One who loved him indeed 



FORBID THEM NOT 55 

had learned before that day that God's heart is wiser 
and more tender than the wisest and tenderest human 
love, and she could not fear that loss would come to 
her baby, if the Father called him home, but rather the 
added gain that comes to the souls led forward in paths 
of the Father's choosing. And yet the mother was 
human and was sounding new depths of suffering as 
she went with her baby down into the billows that were 
to bear him from her sight. Yet still she hoped. 

A night came when she was to meet a new experience 
and to learn w T hat it may have meant when it was 
written that the disciples were " sleeping for sorrow." 
She had known that her baby's death was almost inevi- 
table, yet still she hoped. Looking into the doctor's 
face, she said very quietly, " Doctor, isn't there any 
hope?" 

"I am sorry to tell you so, but I can see none. I 
am afraid he is even now dying." 

The mother said nothing and the doctor soon went 
his way. Several hours later she heard some one, as at 
a distance, say to another: "What shall we do? We 
cannot rouse her and we cannot leave her a moment. 
Every time the baby moans, she taxes our strength to 
hold the cradle steady under her hands. What shall 
we do?" 

The mother heard these words, the first she had 
heard for hours. She had not been asleep; conscious 
weariness never came to her when her beloved were ill. 
She had been benumbed by sorrow and capable of re- 
sponding to nothing but the moan of her dying child. 
She found herself, as she aroused, bending forward, 
grasping the cradle with both hands. She unloosed 



56 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

her grasp, leaned back in her chair, and said: "I 
am myself again. I think the doctor's words be- 
numbed my brain a little. Raise my baby on the 
pillow and let me see him. Perhaps I may make his 
dying easier. " 

In any ordinary illness, in proportion to its severity, 
she had had a strange power to soothe a child held 
near to her. They laid him in her arms, and very 
quietly and tenderly she held the baby as the long 
hours of the night, the morning, and the forenoon 
passed away. 

Again and again they begged her to lay him in his 
cradle, but she still held him, while, hour by hour, he 
seemed passing deeper into the unresponding silence 
of death. There was no sense of weariness, no selfish 
withholding of the soul so dear to hers from the One 
whispering, "Suffer little children to come unto Me," 
but rather an inexpressible love going on with the 
dear little life apparently trembling away into the 
silence. 

There was not the faintest expectation of a possible 
recognition or farewell. It was simply an irrepressible 
longing to go with her baby to the very verge of his 
earthly life. She had not prayed that he might live 
on, on the earth. God knew her love for the child. 
She knew what she had always asked for him, — the 
best that even He could give; and she did not for a 
moment doubt God's power or will to give to her baby 
the best in any world. And by a strange exaltation, 
God was lifting her soul to a height of love that made 
her forget herself wholly in her love for her child. She 
was not holding him to the earth. She was willing to 



FORBID THEM NOT 57 

accept God's will concerning him, and she was truly 
loving him with all her soul. 

Suddenly, a change came over the little face, set 
already, as it seemed, in the stillness of death. The 
little body relaxed, the eyes, deep, dark, beautiful as 
never before, and filled, as it seemed, with an unspeak- 
able message of love, opened full into the mother's 
eyes bending over them; and the most ecstatic smile 
that mother ever has seen or was ever to see glorified 
her baby's face. 

There was not a vestige of pain resting on the little 
face. It seemed as if minutes went by while the eyes 
of the child and the mother held each other, and the 
smile grew ever the more radiant. And yet it was not 
like one of the old-time smiles, and the eyes held not 
their old-time greeting. It was a soul's farewell to 
another soul that was to be left behind, for a time, in 
the sorrows and cares of earth. 

As truly as if he had spoken to her, the baby's 
soul said to his mother's, "I have come to you again, 
back from the very border-land. You know, now, that 
I have not forgotten and I shall not forget. You will 
go your way and I will go mine, and in such a little 
while you will find me again. And I shall go on loving 
you as I love you now, and you will love me as you love 
now, only in each of us, love will grow till we meet 
again." 

Then the baby withdrew his eyes and looked about, 
apparently for the father he loved so much, unavoid- 
ably absent in a distant city. Then turning his eyes 
again full upon his mother's, the same expression of 
immortal love filled them, the same radiant smile 



58 DOES GOB COMFORT? 

transfigured his face, faded slowly, the eyes closed 
gently and opened no more on the earth. Gently and 
quietly, but with no returning consciousness, the little 
life slowly ebbed away. 

Even on his father's return, that beloved voice had 
no power to raise again the drooping eyelids; but to 
the mother had come the blessed gift of new ties of 
motherhood, spiritual ties, immortal ties, utterly 
indestructible ties, that were to bind her to this little 
child, gone forward from her sheltering arms into the 
welcoming care of the dear Lord Jesus, in a conscious 
love over which neither death nor distance nor time 
should have any power, — ties that were to grow the 
stronger and the dearer as one by one other little 
children from the same earthly home were to go for- 
ward, following the dear little boy who entered into 
the life immortal that sweet September afternoon so 
long ago. 

Will it seem strange if I add that as my baby passed 
into his final sleeping, I felt that I lifted him and laid 
him in my absent mother's arms and said to myself, 
" Perhaps the dear Lord Jesus who knew how much 
she loved all little children and how much she must 
love my baby, will let her care for him until he feels 
at home in heaven" ? At all events I did feel so. 

And again, God the Comforter drew very near to both 
of us who had loved our baby so, and my mother and 
my baby went beside me as it were in a glorified silence 
into other depths of bereavement that lay before me 
in the near future. 

We laid our baby down to sleep. It seemed hard to 
leave him alone in a solitary little grave that we could 



FORBID THEM NOT 59 

seldom visit, and my mother's grave was opened and 
the little casket placed on hers ; and we turned again 
to the home lonely to all of us, but, as I learned later, 
lonely most to the little sister, who could in no wise 
understand the absence of the brother she had loved 
so much, nor the silence that had fallen into her sun- 
shine. 

But she was the most sunny, winsome, self-forgetful 
little soul that I have ever known ; and not understand- 
ing at all the change that had corae, she did her baby 
best to fill up the measure of our delight, "Mamma's 
Comfort/ 7 I called her one day, and after that when 
she was especially loving she often called herself 
" Mamma's Tumfort." 

I do not think we let her see our sadness. We loved 
her all the more and filled her life from waking to 
sleeping with sunshine and joy, and hour by hour 
thanked God the more deeply that she was spared to us. 

One day, eight months after Harry died, she did not 
seem quite her normal self. The next day we knew 
that she was suffering from scarlatina, " a slight attack/' 
as our doctor said. 

I suppose it might have proved "a slight attack," 
but there was, as events showed, an error in judgment, 
which we learned too late; and before we realized that 
she was seriously ill, she was beyond human helping. 

I cannot describe the night that she lay dying. She 
was our first-born, our absolutely satisfying one, and 
seemed knit into our very souls as if she were a part of 
each of our lives, as she truly was. All night long we 
watched beside her, the dear little daughter never once 
before in her brief life unresponsive to our words of 



60 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

love. Then the daylight came. The sweet May 
sunlight filled the room. She suddenly lay still, with 
her little hand resting in mine, and closed her eyes and 
went to the land not lonely for her, because there, 
waiting for her, dwelt the dear Lord Jesus and the 
tender mother heart, so akin to that of the Lord Jesus, 
and the dear little brother whom she had loved so 
much and never forgotten. 

I have never understood the calmness that came 
into my soul, as I laid down her precious little hands, 
folding within them the last kiss that I was ever to 
press there. Later, I prepared her for her last resting 
place, in perfect quietness and without any words. 
There were weighty reasons why I must be calm and 
strong, and God helped me to be. He strengthened me, 
if not by conscious comforting, by showing me clearly 
that I must be self-controlled for the sake of another 
life depending on mine. God offers many varied motives 
for living, to those who ought to live. Thus He some- 
times comforts indirectly by holding souls in patience 
until they are able to receive the fulness of His peace. 

I was calm, as I have said, but I remember well the 
shock of strange surprise that came to me w T hen, after 
I had dressed her for the last time, and laid her down 
forever out of my arms, going out on the veranda, and 
looking with unseeing eyes at the world, sight suddenly 
came into them, and I noted the changes that the week 
had brought, — the trees abloom, the grass in full 
verdure, the birds singing as if the world had never been 
so full of joy before, — and my darling dead, my little 
daughter gone forever from the beauty, the music, the 
love of earth. Was it possible f Could I live without 



FORBID THEM NOT 61 

her? Had I lost her? Yes, thank God, I could live, 
live all the more faithfully because God had given her 
to me, and such a gift I could not lose, unless I tore 
myself from God and her. 

She was very beautiful as she lay in her little casket, 
strewn with primroses and lilies of the valley, her 
golden curls clustering about her head, a favorite 
dolly resting on her little arm, as so often when she 
lay sleeping. I could not go with her to her distant grave 
beside my mother's, but to my own surprise I bade the 
little body good-by in perfect peace and calmness, and 
saw my husband depart with the dear little casket, 
still thanking God above everything else that He had 
given me those precious ties that neither death nor 
time nor distance could destroy. 

I could not understand myself. The peace in which 
I was held was a mystery. I had loved this child with 
my whole soul. She was dead and had vanished for- 
ever from my mortal eyes; yet I was abiding in per- 
fect peace, I was not even weeping. Ah ! was it 
because I was beginning to understand God, to know T 
something more of the power of immortal love, of 
utterly unselfish mother love? And was it possible 
that my mother was near, nearer even than the next 
room ? 

I cannot explain any of it. I only know that these 
were the facts, that this was my actual mental and 
spiritual condition. I was truly proving God's power 
to comfort. 

The burial over, my husband returned, and we took 
up our changed life, brought infinitely nearer to each 
other, both by the depths of pain and the heights of 



62 DOES GOB COMFORT? 

spiritual experience through which our bereavements 
were leading us. 

Then, a few weeks later, the Angel of Life hovered 
again over our home, and another little child was laid 
in my arms. Until his birth I had been kept in perfect 
calmness ; after that, I suddenly became very weak, and 
it seemed to all that my life was rapidly ebbing. I was 
still calm, but the will to live on on the earth seemed 
to have left me, and I was not conscious of the old-time 
mother love for the child. 

The baby was a large, beautiful boy; but, unlike 
other babies, he did not cry. The nurse said to me one 
day: "I never heard anything so pitiful as this baby's 
sighs. I wish he would cry like other babies. It's 
unnatural for a baby to sigh so." But he did not cry, 
and he continued to sigh, and I was so ill that it made 
little impression upon me. 

One day I was exceedingly weak, unable even to 
move without aid. In the evening the nurse said 
quietly, "I don't want to frighten you, but I am afraid 
your baby is very ill." I knew by her tone that she 
thought him dying, or already dead. 

The shock seemed to fill my veins with new life. I 
raised myself unaided and said, " Lay him in my arms." 
She did so; then, adjusting the pillows, went for assist- 
ance. The baby was not dead, he was in convulsions, 
passing rapidly from one to another. I held him in my 
arms till nearly morning ; then I lay down for an hour 
or two, and at daylight rose, dressed, and gave myself 
without thought of my own physical condition to 
caring for my baby. 

Our new physician, a most careful and skilful man, 



FORBID THEM NOT 63 

gave us no hope for the little life. Instead, a day or 
two later he said to me: "Do not pray for your baby's 
life, for I fear that if he lives, these terrible convulsions 
will have wrecked him mentally. It may be best for 
him and for you that God should take him." 

I said little; I was calm and strong again, but I 
remember, as if it were yesterday, the intense will to 
live that I might serve my child so long as he needed 
me that filled my soul. I was still unconscious of the 
old joyous love such as I had before felt for my chil- 
dren ; but I realized at once that God had given me a 
motive for living that would carry me to an extreme 
old age, if my child continued to have great need of me. 
Verily God had strengthened me according to my need, 
even if for a while I was to be unconscious of vital 
comfort. 

For a day or two longer the little life hovered in the 
balance, then a change of treatment proved effective, 
even after we had ceased to hope, and returning life 
brought quietness and strength to the baby form. 

In the meantime unusual strength had been given 
to me. I was perfectly calm and apparently uncon- 
scious of weariness, and even after the baby rallied 
experienced no reaction. There was still present the 
benumbing sense of pain created by the loss of Harry 
and Mary, that had become so dominant in my days 
of physical weakness; but I knew that my life on the 
earth was needed, that God would give me strength 
according to my day, and comfort, in His own good 
time; and I thankfully took up again the life that I 
saw so clearly was essential to the little one in my arms. 

Once recovered from the physical strain upon his 



64 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

life, which our physicians attributed to the effect 
upon his mother of the little daughter's death, our 
baby, Jamie, proved to be a veritable incarnation of 
joy and sunshine in our home. I have never seen a 
more joyous baby. He had but one real crying spell 
in his little life of nearly a year. He often awakened 
himself apparently from the soundest sleep by merry 
laughter. Opening his eyes suddenly, he would look 
about him, and finding his mother's eyes smiling back 
into his, he would close his again and go back to finish 
the interrupted sleep. 

He had not a trace of nervousness or fretfulness 
about him. When he was ten months old, he weighed 
thirty pounds and gave every promise of a perfect 
mental and physical life. I mention these facts to 
prove that if his mother had found the great strain of 
his little sister's death too heavy for her to bear without 
serious physical results to him at first, as a whole the 
influences preceding his birth had made for strength 
and healthfulness of body and brain, in short, for prom- 
ise to the coming life. 

God had indeed been with me through it all, and 
given me strength to go on at least in quietness. It 
was simply quietness, it was not joy. It did not seem 
then that I ever could again be joyous; but I was to 
learn that God's Word inspires one to joyous living as 
truly as do His visible gifts. 

I was reading my Bible one day, conscious only that 
God was giving me grace to say day by day, "Thy will 
be done," when my eye fell upon this verse in Hebrews, 
" Whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and 
the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end." 



FORBID THEM NOT 65 

That word, "rejoicing," spoke to my soul almost like 
a clarion call to a new height of living. It seemed meant 
for me personally, — a call to live, — whatever came 
to me of bereavement, of struggle, of seeming loss — 
"rejoicing." It struck my soul almost like a blow. 
Over and over again, I said to myself, "I cannot re- 
joice; I cannot. I can say, 'Thy will be done'; but 
I cannot, cannot rejoice." But I seemed to be in the 
grip of a call that I could not turn away from. For 
days I struggled with the thought, "Can God ask me 
to rejoice?" 

Slowly He lifted me to understand a little of the 
meaning of the words to those who first heard them, 
facing separations, the loss of all things, yes, even 
martyrdom, and of all they had meant to the myriads 
since; and then by imperceptible degrees I began to 
accept even that will, and a minor song began to rise 
in my soul and faint whisperings of "the rejoicing of 
the hope." 

It was a severe test, but it marked a new departure 
in my spiritual life. The broadened thought of God 
alone remained with me, and unconsciously the. pulses 
of my natural life grew stronger and richer, and my 
power of conscious loving slowly reawakened. Till 
this time I had had little sense of my former power of 
loving. Even my baby I had watched without any of 
the ecstasy of mother love ; but in the spiritual struggle 
that came to me, gladness in love and in service grew 
again, and soon all the sweet abandon of mother love 
throbbed through my soul. Then how I loved him ! 
How intensely I loved him ! It was like new wine, and 
yet under it all was the consciousness, once wholly 



66 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

unrealized, that my baby's life might suddenly pass 
on into the higher spheres. 

Yet even that consciousness did not now make me 
tremble. I had learned that, whatever might come, 
God would give me grace to go through it, if it was 
necessary that I should remain upon the earth. And 
I simply thanked Him with all my heart that He had 
renewed my power of intense loving, and, more than 
that, given me the power to rejoice in all His will. 

And thus the hours and days, each sweeter and more 
beautiful than the one before it, passed swiftly by, and 
my baby, one of the sunniest, happiest little souls my 
eyes ever looked upon, grew apace. I had but one fear 
in those golden days. I shivered mentally now and 
then, as I looked forward to the swiftly coming anni- 
versary days of Mary's going from me, and wondered 
often how I could go through them without in any way 
affecting seriously the little life that, although so joyous, 
was yet so dependent upon my health and moods. 

I tried not to look forward, but to stay myself on the 
thought that God would carry me through them; 
and He did, but in how unforeseen a way. 

The period that I had dreaded lay between May first 
and May sixth. The last week in April, Jamie was, by 
events beyond my control, exposed to a sudden cold. 
Croup resulted. Our physician, who perfectly under- 
stood the child's constitution, was seriously ill and could 
not attend him. The one we called to him, misled by 
the child's magnificent physique and a rare power of 
self-control that he had possessed from his earliest 
days, could not realize that he was so seriously ill till 
he was beyond the aid of medical help ; and I had again 



FORBID THEM NOT 67 

the distress of seeing a child die whose life apparently 
might have been saved. 

The little soul passed as bravely as he had lived. 
At noontide he lay quietly in my arms, where he had 
so often lain, apparently falling asleep, but it was into 
the sleep that knows no waking here. 

Then again I dressed a beloved child for his last, long 
sleep, and laid him gently down out of my arms for- 
ever, — as I believed, into " the dear arms that ten- 
derer are than mine." 

I was perfectly calm, calmer than I am to-day as I 
sit recalling those long-past hours. 

We sat together, that night, in our again bereaved 
home, unable to sleep, but finding, each in proportion 
to our need, the strange peace, and, may I say, the special 
comfort God gives to those still owning in indestruct- 
ible spiritual ties a little soul that has passed on from 
the earthly into the heavenly home. 

I remember the deepened peace that came to me, 
as his father read to me sentence after sentence from 
our dear old family Bible, — notably this, " We asked 
life of thee and thou gavest it him, even length of days 
for ever and ever.' 7 

The following afternoon, funeral services were 
again held in our home, and this time together we went 
forth, carrying our baby to his burial in a distant state. 

I had wondered how I was to meet the early hours of 
May first. I met them in perfect calmness, uplifted 
by a new and most painful bereavement into heights of 
strength and peace I could not have foreseen before 
they came to me. 

It seemed to me, as I rode through the silent night and 



68 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

on through the awakening dawn, to the old home where 
I had once lived with my mother, that all my earthly 
past lay years behind me, and that only God and ser- 
vice were essential; that I had learned that human ties, 
even the dearest, could not be broken, although they 
might be lifted above human cognizance. Again there 
was that strange sense that my mother knew, that she 
shared, and that the dear little child, still so near to us 
and yet so far, might be, yes was, nearer to her than 
he had ever been to me in the flesh. 

I have never tried to explain to myself why it always 
seemed perfectly natural to me, as one by one I gave 
my children back to God, to believe with deep assur- 
ance that in some way God would let my mother care 
for my little ones, newly come to heaven, as once He 
had let her care for me, newly come to earth. 

Come from whence it may, I did have this feeling, and 
it was an element of much comfort in the depths of 
natural distress that I must unavoidably ford in the 
lonely days to come. 

On the afternoon of the first of May we laid the little 
body beside our other little ones. The beautiful river 
glided quietly by, the solemn mountains stood in their 
impassive strength in the distance, the sunniest of 
May-day skies bent over us, and the earliest birds of 
spring sang all about us ; but the earthly sunshine and 
beauty and melody that had been ours had vanished, 
gone down into those little graves. All human delight 
seemed eclipsed, and only the peace of God, only the 
joy those find who are willing to suffer His will as well 
as to do it, as they may, remained. 

I remember still the strange sense of quietness and 



FORBID THEM NOT 69 

strength with which I turned to face my life again. I 
was sure that God would keep me strong, but I could 
not see from what secret source the gladness of life 
could again come to me. 

A few days later a long-buried hand brought to me 
almost infinite comfort and cheer. 

As it were by chance, in the home of a friend I opened 
a book on the Roman catacombs. I looked at it 
listlessly, then suddenly became intent on a message 
to me. It was simply the record of an inscription 
above the burial place of a baby in the catacombs. 
It read thus: "In Peace. Felix our beloved child, 
aged one year." That was all they wrote of their 
beloved baby. 

This is what the legend said to me: " Almost two 
thousand years ago those other parents buried a Felix, 
a beloved child. Their lives looked as long to them as 
they looked forward to their lonely years without him, 
as yours do to you to-day, without your baby 'aged 
one year, ' and yet remember for your comfort how short 
their parting was in reality, compared to the hundreds 
of years in which they have been reunited. They laid 
their baby down ' in peace. ' Whoever they were and 
to whatever fate they were to go forward, to martyr- 
dom or to life in the lonely catacombs, God went with 
them and comforted and guided them, till, in such a 
little while, He lifted them up into the life eternal, 
whither before them He had gathered in their baby, 
their 'blessed' baby, as blessed to them as was your 
baby to you ; blessed in his coming and in his going and 
in the meeting yet to be." 

Again I had been lifted by a Power not of myself, 



70 DOES GOD COMFOBT? 

but as I truly believed by the comforting Spirit of God, 
on to a new and higher plane of living. Again I took 
up my life with renewed strength and a peace and joy, 
yes, a gladness in life that no coming change or sorrow 
was ever to destroy. The years were to bring to me a 
renewal of the deepest home joys. Children were to 
be given us who were to remain with us. One more little 
life was to come to us but for a day, and then go for- 
ward into the home where, abiding in the peace of the 
blessed, our other beloved awaited her coming. 

We had been greatly gladdened by the coming of 
another little daughter to our arms, and my friends 
feared that her unforeseen death would affect me 
seriously; but again, and even more strongly than at 
any time since the night of my mother's dying, and in 
some respects even more strongly than then, came the 
great uplifting assurance of the indestructibility of all 
true human loving, and such a consciousness of the 
brevity of all human suffering as compared with the 
endless duration of the eternal peace and joy, and a 
sense of the all-consoling, uplifting power of the presence 
of God, that my soul seemed to find no depths of suffer- 
ing, but only heights of peace and joy in God. And 
when my baby Amy was borne away from me to her 
burial, she seemed hardly to have vanished from my 
presence, and she has never seemed very far away 
from me. 

As our remaining children grew to maturity, great as 
was our happiness in them, they did not seem much 
more real or near to us, when absent, than were the 
" blessed" ones who had been for years among the 
immortals. 



FORBID THEM NOT il 

To a degree that I cannot explain, there always seemed, 
if I may so speak, a double atmosphere in our home, — 
one, enshrining my mother and my unseen children 
and dear ones whom my husband had eai;ly loved and 
lost; the other, holding those still living on the earth. 

I have never been in the slightest degree drawn 
towards spiritualism; but as the years have gone by, 
I have learned lessons of indirect helping, coming as I 
could but believe from sources that God allowed to 
minister to me, supplementing, but in no degree taking 
the place of, His direct guidance. 

I cannot explain these experiences, even to myself, — 
I have tried rather to accept them simply as some of 
the minor proofs of God's great goodness to me. In 
hours of physical danger I have had the consciousness 
of surrounding care, breaking the force of whatever 
was happening, and holding me without fear while 
in jeopardy. In hours of real spiritual danger, unable 
for the time to see the way clearly, I have, if I may so 
speak reverently, felt almost as if there stood by me a 
lesser angel than the one who appeared of old in 
Gethsemane, strengthening me for my conflict, a lesser 
conflict indeed, and yet so heavy that only the grace of 
God, direct or indirect, could have carried me through. 

Thus, a faith in God that nothing henceforth could 
disturb, and a sense of growing companionship with 
my beloved gone forward, that nothing could break, 
had become my inalienable portion. Thus I had 
proved by vital experience the infinite power of God 
to comfort, to inspire, to guide. I was always to be 
poor. I had been greatly bereaved. I had still years 
of heavy care awaiting me; but I had truly tasted 



72 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

the waters of Life. I knew by experience the Eternal 
Life they win who know "the only true God and Jesus 
Christ whom He has sent." 

And so strengthened, made rich and glad, joyous 
even, in the hope that I might yet learn more of God, 
more and more truly have grace given me to do or to 
suffer His will, I went forward with steadfast eyes and 
unflinching faith to meet the remaining years. 



CHAPTER IX 



SUNSET HOURS 



I have recalled in these pages, as frankly and as 
simply as I could, the unfailing goodness of God in every 
bereavement that came to me. All my life long, other 
cares, less acute than my sorrows, and }^et often ex- 
hausting and many times sorely perplexing, were allotted 
to me, and I was often greatly tempted to resist things 
that seemed unjust, coming in from the outer world, or 
to try to arrange my life after the manner that seemed 
just to me; and it was often very difficult for me to 
let " my soul wait in stillness upon God." 

But the paths that my Father had appointed for my 
treading I could not escape from. And to-day, look- 
ing back upon my hedged-in pathway, I see clearly 
that His ways were wiser and tenderer than any of 
my own choosing could have been. These were 
lessons that" I learned slowly, and they were not fully 
mastered till the closing hours of my active years. Yet 
now that those years are nearly numbered, I realize 
that, in the long succession of my days, my God has 
been teaching me the precious truth that while there 
is no sorrow possible to any soul that may not lead to 
heights of peace, unknown but for its uplifting power, 



74 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

no burden so heavy that God's grace cannot enable 
the one who bears it to walk bravely, sometimes even 
joyously, forward under it, while there is no seeming 
loss that God cannot transfigure into conscious gain, 
there can also be no temptation, ay more wondrous 
still, no sin, turned away from in deep loathing, that 
shall not give to the truly repentant and deeply hum- 
bled soul a blessed sense of the cleansing, healing, 
energizing life of one born again in God. 

One source of comfort and of blessing, that my God 
bestowed upon me, as my years were passing by, lay 
in the very sweet and precious friendships He continued 
to lead me to. Some of these friendships almost 
startle me as I recall their peculiar adaptation to the 
needs in which they found me, and in the blessings 
which their coming brought me. I shall not attempt 
to describe these friendships; for while many of my 
friends have gone forward into the perfect life and 
friendship, others still remain upon the earth, some 
dwelling upon the border-land, others, as I trust, with 
many years of active service and deepening joy in God 
still before them. 

Thus my life, studded with cares and sorrows, as 
men measure care and sorrow, has been enriched from 
my earliest years by friend after friend given to me, as 
I believe, in eternal possession, sharing with me, as I 
with them, the best that life had brought us, going on 
with me as we went forward to whatever life held for us. 
I have often questioned if to many have been given 
any more perfect friendships than God has given to me. 
From my sunniest morning hours they have inspired 
and strengthened me; they have broadened and 






SUNSET HOURS 75 

beautified my life; they have often made me forget 
my external limitations. Those that are still mortal 
deeply bless and enrich my life to-day; and I thank 
God that I have learned, from those gone forward, 
that there is a phase in human friendship over which 
Death and Time have no power, that there is a spiritual 
telepathy that "the clods of the valley" cannot in- 
terrupt, much less destroy. I have come to believe, 
beyond my souFs power of doubting, that some that 
men call the dead, do not forget, that they may some- 
times greatly serve us if we are spiritually and respon- 
sively in touch with them; and I have proved also, to 
my own deep joy, that they may even move us to help 
them to finish some of their own incompleted service. 
I know that these things are true, because my Lord 
and Master has made my soul ready and willing to 
learn these truths, and enabled me to receive them in 
great peace and humility. 

Experience also taught me the truth in Mrs. Brown- 
ing's words, "The silence of life more pathetic than 
death's, " and I more than once turned away in sad- 
ness from what seemed sundered friendships; but I 
learned, as the years went by, that every high, true 
affection has an immortal pulse and cannot die. 

I also learned to know that one of the sweet surprises 
that God holds for us in His own tender keeping, ready 
to be revealed to us when we need it, — here on the 
earth or hereafter in the Great Meeting, — is the com- 
ing back to us of our own again. I have met friends 
who had seemed to have utterly vanished, gone away 
into "the silence of life"; yet meeting as it were by 
accident, each has known, in the instant of meeting, 



76 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

that there had been no real parting, no spiritual silence, 
but that all unconsciously both had been going for- 
ward side by side, each the braver and truer because of 
the old-time fellowship. There are others whom I 
have not yet met again, but I have come to believe 
whole-heartedly that nothing nobly worthy can be 
lost, that somewhere, somehow, in God's good time, I 
shall learn that nothing true has been destroyed or 
left forever behind, and not one prayer for any one I 
loved has fallen fruitless, unforeseen as may sometimes 
have been the manner of the answer. 

In previous pages I have dwelt somewhat fully upon 
the special comfortings that have been given to me 
after I had entered into deep sorrows. One line of 
experience, which may perhaps be less common, — I 
at least have not often heard others refer to similar 
ones, — has been what I have felt to be a sort of 
spiritual premonition of coming sorrow. No bereave- 
ment since my mother's death, and no other spiritual 
trial, has come without a special drawing near to God 
in prayer, impressed, as I learned to believe, by a 
Power outside myself. 

Often for several days before the coming of a special 
need, I would feel impelled to pray for a greater near- 
ness to God. It was not that I felt fear. My sky 
would seem perfectly clear, and yet there would be the 
constant feeling, sleeping or waking, that I had some 
new need of direct strength from God; and then sud- 
denly the burden of the new need would be upon me, 
and even with the new need fresh supplies of strength 
would come welling into my life. 

As the years passed on I had come to believe that it 



SUNSET HOURS 77 

was probable that my life would go on without any 
further distinctive experiences, that I had climbed 
most of my mountain summits, and passed through 
most of the valleys that had awaited me, and that it 
might be appointed me to go dow r n into the sunset 
hours of my life more intent upon the blessed memories 
of my past and my hope for the life to be revealed, than 
taxed by present conflicts. In short, I felt that the 
struggles of my spiritual life on the earth were virtually 
completed. Yes there was one more valley awaiting 
me as I came towards the sunset hours, a valley 
through which my pathway was henceforth to lie, 
shrouded in a darkness illumined by no ray of natural 
sunlight. 

Blindness came to me, sudden and inescapable. All 
the beauty of the visible world was shut out, and I 
learned fully what it seemed to me I had only faintly 
realized before, the intensity of my delight in the 
beautiful things of earth. The glories of the sunrise 
and sunset, the indescribable calm and splendor of the 
procession of the moon and the stars, the exquisite 
charm of the shadows floating over the distant hills, 
the silvery beauty of sea and river, the restful verdure 
of the grass and the living grace of tree and flower, — 
faded from my eyes almost in the hours of one brief 
day; and I felt that they were going, never to return. 

And yet my God held me in absolute calm. I knew 
there could be no mistake, because He willed it. 

But for this assurance, this experience must have been 
to me an unfathomable mystery ; for it seemed beyond 
question that I had imperative need of my sight, a need 
that grew no less as the months went by, and unavoid- 



78 DOES GOD COMFORT? 

able difficulties pressed me sorely. And yet again, and 
with a fulness unknown in any previous experiences, 
rich as they had seemed to me as they came one by one, 
there came to me, as I believe from my God, new gifts 
that kept me hour by hour in peace and quietness wait- 
ing upon Him, led me eventually to heights of blessed- 
ness I had not expected this side heaven, and proved 
to me that there was no imperative need for my soul, 
at least, save God. Again I learned that "man shall 
not live by bread alone." 

Then- again my God gave to me another and, in some 
respects, a higher revelation of Himself, of His power 
to comfort, to make strong, and to make rich and glad 
in the depths of seeming loss; and almost before I 
realized the fulness of His power, even in this He had 
transfigured the cross that had seemed so heavy, when 
I took it into my trembling hands, — for they did 
tremble when I bent forward to lift it, — and I found 
it raising me, into something of solitude perhaps, — 
for they that be blind must within those lines walk 
solitary, — but into a solitude wherein my soul more 
truly found God than in any previous experience, 
whether of joy or of sorrow, wherein it found the God 
of the "still, small voice," the God of inexhaustible 
light, the God of unfailing love, the glorious " Power 
not of ourselves," the Power able to save us from sin, 
able to comfort and sustain in the utmost depths of 
human sorrow, the God able to fill with overflowing 
life and gladness the weariest, saddest, most heavily 
burdened heart that earth has ever known. 

This God, once unknown, had answered my earliest 
prayer. He had indeed taught me to know Him and 



SUNSET HOURS 79 

to know myself. He had led me into absolute rest and 
peace. He had filled my soul with courage that noth- 
ing henceforth could appall, and my darkened eyes with 
the glory of the coming sunrise. 

Casting a backward look upon all my past, gathering 
into a whole every experience that my God has sent me, 
the joys, the sorrows, the burdens, the uplifting crosses, 
the answered prayers that sometimes seem to have 
emptied my hands and hedged my pathway, — lifting 
the emptied hands Godward, turning the wandering 
feet heavenward, — have I not reason to say that my 
God in answering my prayers has made me a happy and 
a blessed woman, even as I sit, old and blind and with 
many another limitation, facing the sunrise of the 
eternal morning ? 

Ah ! well was it for me, well far beyond the dreams of 
my childhood, that a mother able to make Jesus Christ 
real to the soul of her child had been given to me; well, 
beyond my faintest imaginings, that in my joyous 
girlhood I had listened to the " still, small voice" ask- 
ing, " Why not now seek God?" well that my God had 
taken me at my word and led me by the surest, if often 
by strait and painful paths unto Himself. 

Blessed for me had been every sorrow, every seem- 
ing loss, every mastered temptation, blessed alike all 
God's gifts and all his withholdings, blessed all His holy 
will concerning me; and just as blessed, yes just as 
bless&d, the assurance that all that God has given to 
me, and been to me, He will give, He will be, to every 
soul that honestly seeks Him, and that every sorrowful 
soul may find in Him all that I have found of guidance, 
of comfort, of peace. 



80 DOES GOB COMFORT f 

Blessed for me that I have proved the infinite tender- 
ness of the promise, "As one whom his mother com- 
forteth, so will I comfort you"; blessed, however hard 
of attaining, the heights whereon I learned something 
of the infinite sweetness of the parting words of the 
Lord Jesus Christ: 

" Peace I leave with you. 

" My peace I give unto you. 

" Not as the world giveth, give I unto you. 

" Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be 
afraid." 



Bless&d be God, even the Father of Our Lord Jesus 
Christ, 

The Father of Mercies, and the God of all comfort ; 
Who comforteth us in all our tribulation. 

—-2 Cor. i. 3,4. 






Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Nov. 2005 

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